Original Album Sales – Comments

From well under a million copies a piece to more than 9 million on average!, sales of albums by the Black Eyed Peas truly rocketed with the release of Elephunk. This new found success saw both Behind The Front and Bridging The Gap see their sales increase, with their original sales plateauing around a quarter of a million.

In spite of several notable hits, Elephunk‘s own sales rose slowly. Suffering from an initial lack of credibility that always damages these kind of acts, this era turned out to be very successful thanks to an impressive string of hits that we will list during the next pages.

Monkey Business and The E.N.D. started with relatively low debuts too considering their predecessor(s) sales. Both also contained a handful of iconic tunes. At 10,3 million and 9,05 million copies respectively, their totals are all the more impressive with the album market collapsing due to the boom of download sales.

The Beginning is disappointing at 3,1 million units, although not as tragic as expected when it debuted at #25 in Italy, #50 in the Netherlands and #58 in Sweden. Obviously, this doesn’t tell the whole story as the group was one of the major forces of the digital market when it started to grow. The following sections will factor in those additional sales to define better the real success of The Beginning.

I Gotta Feeling tops Uptown Funk, Poker Face, Love The Way You Lie, Someone Like You, Just Dance etc. It is tied with Rolling In The Deep and outperformed by Moves Like Jagger which stands at nearly 20 million.

Obviously, all figures were estimated at distinct moments and the accuracy of formulas (most notably Asian sales and ringtones) have been increased over the last months, so possibly one or two of those songs would be just ahead if updated now. Let’s just say it belongs to an elite of about 10 songs that are the very top selling digital tunes ever.

Fantastic analysis. Thanks for providing the list of songs and albums, besides CPS all time artists.
One comment: there’s a mistake in the “achievements” page where it says the streak of 26 consecutive weeks at #1 in Billboard Hot 100. It’s only because of 2 songs (Boom Boom Pow and I Gotta Feeling). “Meet Me Halfway” never reached the top position.